Hey everyone! How's everyone doing? First off I want to start off by saying its not fun getting shaving cream in your mouth. Anyways! This week has gone by super fast man. I can't believe it. And to make things even crazier, this is the last week of my first transfer! It's been super quick. Okay. Now the day by day recap: Monday we decided to do something not many missionaries have done before. A stakeout! We weren't planning on it but there's this one guy who gets home pretty late and we wanted to know exactly when and that was the first idea we had. We didn't have any food but we had some intense Lindsey Sterling music going and that was enough. Our patience ran out, however, and we decided to just go to our next appointment. But of course, as soon as we start leaving a car pulls into the drive way of the house we were at. Yeah. It was him. So then we had to circle around and then go knock on his door. There was no answer but we know when he gets home now! After that we went to our ward mission leader's house to join them for their family home evening and to eat too (of course). One thing I've started to realize is that hispanic's love to feed which is good and bad. It's good because Hispanic food is delicious and I'm always hungry but it's bad because it's nearly impossible to stay in shape as a missionary! We have those 30 minutes in the morning and maybe an activity or two during the week but that's about it! Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong.
Anyways, Tuesday comes and the first thing we do Tuesday's and Thursday's is Muay Thai which is so much fun! It's a Thai form of fighting that our recent convert and best friend Yefri does and he invited us once and we've just kept going. Mainly because it's a good way to wake up and, best of all, it's free. Tuesday and Wednesdaywere pretty slow lesson wise so that was kind of a bummer. Then Wednesday night to Thursday night I was on exchanges with my district leader and he had a ton of lessons. One thing I really like about exchanges is how much you can learn from another missionary so that was really cool. Then skipping forward to the next night was the best part of the week. The ward talent show to raise money for girls camp. The show had everything from singing to a group dancing in Mickey, Elmo and a bunny suit. But the main part of the show was us! The missionaries! We had a skit where our ward mission leader and Yefri were behind us being our arms as we go through an average day for us. I can't share the video but I will share some pictures from the video. It was pretty funny. Then Sunday came around and we taught the new investigators about the importance of the Book of Mormon, gave them a copy and they accepted our invitation to read it. We taught them before church so we invited them again but they weren't able to come so instead they made papusas for us to eat after church with them! They're super cool and now next lesson he'll be cooking up some steaks for us!
Saturday I had a pretty cool experience because in on of our lessons with a less active guy my companion shared his mission plaque scripture which is the same scripture I've been searching for like crazy and couldn't find. Not super amazing but now we know we both love it. It's Words of Mormon 1:7 which says 7 "And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will." And I read this while in the MTC and just kind of thought about how some people may not understand why I'm out here. Some may not understand why I was willing to give up the things I did. And some may not even understand exactly what it is I'm doing. But this scripture answers that. I'm here for a wise purpose. I felt like I need to do this and I followed that prompting and now here I am. I definitely don't know everything about this gospel or even some of the small things and I definitely don't know enough Spanish yet but I know with time and help from the Lord I will be able to learn so much. He's working through me to get his work done. I know that to be true. I've felt it many times and I'll feel so much more. I hope you all have an awesome week and stay tuned for the next episode!
Pictures: 1-3: My skit from the talent show
4: the 3 dancers
5: Me back in Oakland just in time for the playoffs!
6: My new favorite thing...Pringle Ball! Basically basketball but with ping pong balls and Pringles cans